Good news, and much better than expected: the U.S. economy created 243,000 nonfarm jobs in January, up from a 200,000 increase in December, and the unemployment rate dropped from 8.5 percent to 8.3. The private sector added 257,000 jobs, while the public sector cut 14,000. At one point during trading Friday, European stocks hit a six-month high as investors were optimistic about the U.S. jobs report and cheered data that the euro zone might avoid a recession. But Canada's jobs report for the same month was disappointing—it added only 2,300 jobs when economists were expecting 22,000, and unemployment rose to 7.6 percent.

Syrian forces have killed at least 217 people in Homs, according to the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, an NGO that tracks violence in the struggling Arab nation. The 11-month uprising against President Bashar Assad has left hundreds more wounded as Syrian troops continue to shell protesters with mortars. The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on a plan calling for Assad to step down, though it’s unclear whether Russia will back the move. The Russian government, which sells arms to Syria and is closely aligned with Assad, has refused to support any measure that would call for a regime change.

Good economic news is hard to come by these days. So when the January jobs report showed the economy added close to 250,000 jobs, all three stock markets responded with big gains. The Dow closed at 12,862.23, up 1.2 percent. That marked its best close since May 2008. The S&P was up 1.46 percent and the Nasdaq posted a 1.6 percent gain. The activity follows a strong January for the markets, all three of which ended the month up from where they started.

As if the last few days haven’t been difficult enough for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, now it’s been revealed that former George W. Bush press secretary and current GOP operative Ari Fleischer helped the organization find a new senior VP for communications. Fleischer confirmed that he was involved in the search for a fee, but Think Progress is reporting his role extended into grilling candidates about how they would handle Komen’s partnership with Planned Parenthood. Given that Komen has come under fire for politicizing cancer screening, this latest revelation could complicate its efforts to repair the damage done by the scandal.

Four protesters and a soldier were killed in Cairo and Suez on Friday in the ongoing riots after 74 people died after a soccer match in Port Said, Egypt. Witnesses said police used live ammunition to fire into the crowd of protesters in Suez, and another two were shot just steps away from the Interior Ministry in Cairo. The Health Ministry said at least 668 people were injured in the riots. Protesters charge the military-led government for not preventing a stampede that killed dozens of people at a soccer stadium in Port Said on Wednesday.

Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong must be breathing a sigh of relief. Federal prosecutors announced Friday that they were dropping their investigation into whether he committed any crimes—like defrauding the government, money laundering, or drug trafficking—by doping. At issue was Armstrong’s main team sponsor: the United States Postal Service. Investigators were looking into whether government money went to purchase performance-enhancing drugs. Prosecutors did not say why they were dropping the investigation, but released a statement confirming the matter had been closed. Armstrong has denied that he ever doped.

The hacking collective Anonymous recorded a call between investigators on both sides of the pond—who were talking about Anonymous. The 15-minute-long recording of a conference call between British and American investigators was “illegally obtained,” the Bureau said, and an investigation into who hacked the call is underway. The group, which has targeted the sites of governments and law enforcement agencies before, bragged on Twitter that the FBI “might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.” On the call, investigators discussed an ongoing case involving two British men with ties to Anonymous.

New mom Beyoncé Knowles is reportedly being offered $100 million a year to become a judge on The X Factor. She¹d be filling one of the two seats left open when producer Simon Cowell fired judges Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger earlier this week. X Factor still lags behind rival American Idol in viewership, but Cowell reportedly thinks that Blue Ivy’s mom is the one to turn things around. Beyoncé, who has been said to be looking for a job that would keep her closer to home, appeared on the British version of X Factor in 2008.

A judge has ruled that Jared Loughner, the suspect in last year’s Arizona shooting rampage, is still not mentally fit to stand trial and will likely remain in a federal hospital for at least four more months. Loughner was expected to be released from a hospital in Missouri on Feb. 8, but psychologists working with him have insisted he stay. Loughner, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, is charged with 49 felonies stemming from the January shootings that left former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically injured. The latest ruling will be discussed in a court hearing by prosecutors and Loughner’s attorneys on Monday. Meanwhile, employees at an independent movie theater in Arizona recently discovered a short film Loughner submitted a year before the shootings. The three-minute, silent film was titled “W-I-L-D” and featured alternating scenes of a desert and beach, with the words “Lucid Dream” written in the sand.

It gets worse. A second teacher was nabbed Thursday at the Los Angeles school where Mark Berndt, who stands accused of binding and gagging students and putting cockroaches on their faces, taught. Few details have been released about the teacher, and authorities said that they have just begun their investigation. While it is unclear whether the new case is in any way related to Berndt, who has been charged with lewd conduct against 23 students, the Miramonte Elementary School teacher has been removed from the classroom and reassigned to a position where no students are present.

This won’t help promote his new film: Daniel Radcliffe has admitted he was straight up snockered while filming scenes for the Harry Potter movies. “I have a very addictive personality,” Radcliffe said in an interview with the British magazine Heat earlier this week, in which he admitted to drinking “daily—I mean nightly.” While he insists he never drank on the job, he can still “point to any scenes where I’m just gone,” the 22-year-old actor exclaimed. “Dead behind the eyes.” Radcliffe talked about his alcohol problem with U.K. GQ last July, but with his new movie, The Woman in Black, already getting lackluster reviews, perhaps he should have kept mum about his personal life before the film’s U.S. premiere.

We weren’t sure if she was joking, but actress Roseanne Barr says she’s seriously considering a run for the presidency. Barr, who says the two-party system is failing America, is running for the Green Party nomination. The Emmy Award–winning actress released a statement saying she is a longtime supporter of the party, which will pick its nominee during a convention in Baltimore in July. She has already submitted paperwork for her candidacy. Her message? Barr's main campaign promise appears to be that she will fight for middle-class families.

This could turn out to be an international incident. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is reportedly worried that Israel is going to attack Iran because of its nuclear ambitions. The Washington Post quoted Panetta as saying the attack could happen as early as April or May because they want to disrupt Iran's progress on a potential nuclear weapon even though Iran says it only has peaceful intentions. Neither Panetta nor the Pentagon have commented further on the supposed comments. Israel, however, issued a blunt warning that time is running out to stop Iran's nuclear program. said that U.S. officials have also said they believe the Iranian government has taken several al Qaeda members off of house arrest.

It's taken only six years, but the Senate has finally passed legislation that would outlaw insider trading for lawmakers. The House passed the bill in 2006, but it died in the Senate, where it is notoriously hard to get any bills passed, let alone contentious ones. But on Thursday, the Senate voted 96–3 to approve the legislation, a stunning turnaround that came after several media organizations highlighted the fact that elected officials aren't prohibited from using private tidbits they pick up in the halls of Congress to boost their stock portfolios. President Obama called for Congress to pass the bill during his State of the Union address last month. Lawmakers are hoping the vote will help turn around Congress's dismal approval rating.

Mitt Romney is likely to win 50 percent of the vote in Nevada this Saturday, according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling. Results of the survey predict that his closest competitor, Newt Gingrich, will win 25 percent. In a change from the last primary election, in Florida, the poll foresees Ron Paul taking third place, with Rick Santorum in fourth. The poll's analysis explains that Nevada Republicans don't just like Romney more, they "actively dislike" Gingrich—49 percent have a negative opinion of the former speaker. "That's an indication that GOP voters might be starting to sour on him again, sending his numbers back to preSouth Carolina levels," the pollsters write.

Nancy Brinker, the founder and CEO of the Susan G. Komen breast-cancer foundation, has come out to defend the organization's decision to stop awarding grant money to Planned Parenthood for breast-cancer screening—a move that many say is backlash against abortion. But in a conference call with the media Thursday night, Brinker said abortion had nothing to do with it, even though Komen's vice president for policy is Karen Handel, an anti-abortion politician. Brinker said the decision was a result of policy changes on how grants are given. The organization faced a revolt from within: all seven of the California affiliates of Komen released statements saying they opposed the decision to pull funding, as did the Aspen and Denver affiliates. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged $250,000 to Planned Parenthood in response, while 26 senators urged Komen to reconsider.

A New York Times analysis shows that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been giving a pass on the biggest Wall Street firms in the last decade, letting them off on punishments meant to apply to fraud cases. The Times found nearly 350 instances in the last 10 years where the SEC has let financial giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies and avoiding punishments when their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong. According to the report, JPMorgan Chase has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers. Bank of America has settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.

The two female American tourists kidnapped Friday in Sinai have been freed, AFP reports. The tourists and their guide were after gunmen stormed their minivan near a popular Red Sea resort. Officials say the abductors sped away in a sedan and a pickup truck, but left behind three other people who were in the minivan. The incident happened near St. Catherine's Monastery; no one has taken responsibility for the crime, though Egypt has faced a surge in crime since former dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted nearly a year ago.

Britain's Energy Secretary Chris Huhne resigned Friday after prosecutors charged him with trying to pin a speeding penalty on his ex-wife. Prime Minister David Cameron said Huhne "made the right decision" in resigning, as his government faces another major shakeup. Huhne's ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, will face the same charge of perverting the course of justice, for trying to accept speeding penalty points on her then-husband's behalf in 2003. But Huhne has maintained that he is innocent despite the very serious criminal charge against him.

The cellphone maker HTC finally admitted days ago that many of its Android smartphone handsets have long had a “critical” bug that seriously affected its Wi-Fi security—a claim that researchers told them about as far back as last September. Not only that, now HTC has admitted that it's deliberately kept it quiet for five months. The flaw affects recent devices like the Thunderbolt and EVO 4G handsets, and also older models like the Desire HD. Customers will have to check the HTC support website for a manual update next week.

Not so fast, David Choe—you can no longer call your Facebook murals the most expensive work of art, because Qatar has come to the rescue. The oil-rich country has bought Paul Cezanne's painting The Card Players for more than $250 million, making it by far the highest price ever paid for a work of art. Up until this point, the most expensive painting ever sold was a Jackson Pollock for $140 million in the frenzied pre-recession year of 2006, and in recent days the graffiti artist David Choe was reportedly given Facebook stock options for decorating the company's murals in 2005 that cost mere thousands then but will now be worth some $200 million after the social-network giant goes public. But Cezanne's small, quietly somber work beats them all—there are four other Card Players in the world, and they are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Courtauld in London, and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

La dolce vita will have to be enjoyed indoors in Rome on Friday as the Eternal City digs out of a rare snowstorm that blanketed ruins and stranded travelers. Rome hasn’t seen a snowfall since 2005, and reports are that Pope Benedict was seen looking out Vatican windows at what’s said to be the heaviest snow in nearly 25 years. The Colosseum and other ancient sites were closed to tourists out of fear that visitors may slide down the ruins. It’s part of a cold snap that’s had Romans shivering in recent days, with temperatures resting around the freezing point. But it was a stroke of buona fortuna for Roman schoolchildren—the city’s mayor gave them two snow days.

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation issued a statement Friday apologizing for pulling funding from Planned Parenthood—and pledged to continue funding existing grants with Planned Parenthood. The move came at the end of a tumultuous week for the Komen Foundation, which had faced furious backlash after announcing earlier this week that they would pull their funding for cancer screening from Planned Parenthood—a decision that many suspected was because of abortion politics. Komen denied the link to politics and instead linked it to a recent congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood, but in Friday’s statement, the charity said they “amend our criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.” In the 24 hours after Komen’s decision on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood received a spike in donations that nearly made up for the loss of funds from the charity.

Donald Trump may have decided to endorse Mitt Romney, but it was the Obama campaign that celebrated when it heard the news. Obama deputy campaign manager Julianna Smoot is taking full advantage of the endorsement, mocking it in a new fundraising email to supporters. "Yesterday, Mitt Romney said he was 'humbled' to accept Donald Trump's endorsement. Seriously. Yes, Donald Trump—birth certificated conspiracy leader—has decided that Mitt Romney's his guy, and Romney has embraced him without reservation. He made a speech and even sent out a press release welcoming him. Meanwhile, here's what we're humbled by: 38,830 supporters have donated to the Two-Term Fund." 

As we’ve seen with the Romney sons, families often help out on campaigns—but they don’t usually get paid for it. Not true for Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s daughter, Ayla Brown, a former American Idol contestant who has performed at three of her father’s campaign events. FEC filings show that Brown’s campaign has paid the company representing Ayla $9,500 for the singer to perform at his events. The Brown campaign didn’t say what portion of the performance fees went to Ayla and her bandmates, but it did say one of the reasons Brown compensated his daughter was to avoid putting her bandmates in an uncomfortable situation where they would have to volunteer. “Everything was done properly and in full compliance with FEC regulations,” a campaign spokesman said in a statement. Ayla has been part of Brown’s appeal since the end of 2010. He’s now locked in a tight race with Elizabeth Warren, the likely Democratic nominee.

Handgun buyers in Virginia may soon be able to purchase more than one gun a month in the state under a new law that would lift the 19-year-old limit on purchases. The Republican-controlled state Senate is expected to do away with the limit in a final vote on Friday, The Washington Post reports. Just this week, the House passed a bill allowing government employees to store guns and ammo in their cars at the workplace, including at child-care centers and public parks. However, a Senate committee has killed two other gun-rights proposals that would have prevented colleges from banning firearms on campus—a particularly outrageous proposal given the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech—though a House committee is still considering whether to allow faculty members to carry guns on campus.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi praised the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision to revise grant-funding policies to restore money to Planned Parenthood—but some of her colleagues slammed the change of events. “Women’s health has a big victory this morning,” Pelosi said. The Komen foundation had changed its funding policy, leaving Planned Parenthood no longer eligible—a decision the charity said had nothing to do with politics, but many suspected abortion was the reason. Within a week, the foundation reversed its decision and said it would restore funding to Planned Parenthood. Twenty-six Senate Democrats had signed a letter to Komen asking it to restore Planned Parenthood’s funds, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged $250,000 in matching grants. But not all lawmakers were pleased: Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers slammed the decision as “hollow and weak.”

President Obama previewed his plan to help U.S. veterans get back to work in his State of the Union address, but now he’s outlined a new program that, if passed, would help war vets get jobs working for the federal government. He will also reissue a request for $5 billion in his 2013 budget to encourage local law enforcement agencies and fire departments to hire military veterans who have served since the September 11 attacks. “They’ve already risked their lives defending America. They should have the opportunity to rebuild America,” the president said.